ACTION ALERT: Take 5 minutes to stop the Hostile Environment in your local school

Since our partial victory, the campaign has been working behind the scenes to end the hostile environment in Education.

We’ve written to every Member of Parliament and hundreds of members of the House of Lords to ask them, to take action to protect children from the Hostile Environment.

We have written to the Department for Education stating that they must do three things:

Destroy nationality data collected since 2016

Revoke the regulation that allows it

Stop and prevent any data in children’s school records from being used for immigration enforcement.

They have responded saying that they will not do so, and that they did not give assurances that this data and legislation would not be used for future immigration enforcement purposes. We know that the existing school census data is already being used for immigration enforcement purposes. We want this to end and planning further actions which we will announce before the end of the year.

If you agree with us then please take 5 minutes today to support our three-point plan.
Use or adapt the following tweets and tweet at @educationgovuk, the Secretary of State @DamianHinds or your local MP:

“Hey @DamianHinds and @educationgovuk
Support @schools_abc three actions to protect all children from the hostile environment: http://www.schoolsabc.net/2018/11/november-action-alert/ #EducationNotDeportation #BoycottSchoolCensus”

“Education is a right for all children. Schools should not be part of the #HostileEnvironment
@DamianHinds please support @schools_abc three actions to protect all children from it: http://www.schoolsabc.net/2018/11/november-action-alert/ #EducationNotDeportation #BoycottSchoolCensus”

“We know you’re busy but children can’t wait for their school to be made safe from the Hostile Environment.
In June 2018, the DfE confirmed nationality and country-of-birth data must no longer be collected by schools through the school census but they are not prevented from using gathered data for future immigration enforcement purposes.

In September, under the umbrella campaign of Against Borders for Children, over 25 leading child rights organisations and advocates including Liberty, Privacy International, and Just For Kids Law are challenging the Department for Education’s use of children’s personal information collected in the school census, in immigration enforcement. We need your help. Call for action to restore child rights.

Against Borders for Children (ABC) and DefendDigitalMe have written to you and the Education Secretary, Damian Hinds to ask the Department of Education to complete the work of ending the Hostile Environment to ensure no child fears deportation for exercising their right to an education. Please voice your support in parliament to ask the DfE to do these three actions to safeguard children:

1. Delete all pupil nationality and country of birth data held by DfE before March 2019.
2. Revoke the Education (Pupil Information) (England) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2016 (SI 808/2016) that enabled the collection of pupils’ nationality data.
3. Protect all personal data collected for children’s educational purposes under the Education Act 1996 (s 537a) from Home Office requests in immigration enforcement.